


Extreme Makeover, Werewolf Edition

by vilupe



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, Gen, Sibling Relationship, The Hale House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 01:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/856021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vilupe/pseuds/vilupe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek just wanted a place where she could be safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extreme Makeover, Werewolf Edition

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this before it is thoroughly jossed by tonight's episode and I delete it from where it's been lurking in my word docs in a fit of rage. It was supposed to be part of a bigger piece but pretty much demanded to be it's own thing.

It’s back breaking work. Rebuilding the Hale house.

 

The city had torn it down, rotting wooden pieces littered carelessly on the preserve’s leafy ground like they didn’t once belong to walls and frames that sheltered a family. Like they weren’t witness to generations worth of happiness and heartbreak and death and tragedy. Derek had stood by and watched that day. Hated himself just enough to twist the knife between his ribs a little deeper.

 

And that would have been enough. The house and grounds had been the site of so much death, so much devastation caused by him— the impulsive actions of a stupid child. It would have been enough to see it crumble to the ground under the creaking metallic groans of the bulldozer and just drive back to his loft with one less thing out there serving as a monument to the past.

 

Except for Cora.

 

Cora who was young and wild and angry. Who, younger still, had been abandoned in the world without her parents, without her pack, alone with the knowledge that somewhere out there Laura and Derek weren’t even trying to find her, didn’t know that they could. She deserved more than to find her brother empty and tired, an animal that had lost the desire to live.  Derek drove out to the empty grounds of their former home for a week, telling himself everyday that Cora needed a home, Cora needed a place where she could feel safe and find family and pack again. That she needed him, knowing all the while that he was desperately trying to believe that it wasn’t the other way around.

 

Beacon Hills was never supposed to be permanent. He had always thought that the day he came back here would be in a coffin to be buried next to the remains of his parents, used to joke that even then it would be too soon. But there came a point in time where he realized that Charlie the cheese guy at the monthly farmer’s market knew his name. That he started looking forward to spending time with the ragtag group of teenagers he cobbled together in a makeshift pack. That Beacon Hills was looking less and less like responsibility and more and more like choice.

 

In the time it took to protect it from the supernatural forces it attracted (he, he attracted, let it not be said that Derek didn’t know he was the nexus of all the bad things), Derek had resigned himself to the truth that Beacon Hills had gotten so underneath his skin he was never going to leave. He looked at the cleared out grounds of the empty Hale lot and couldn’t bear the thought of living in this town without the call of the forest greeting him in the night, the dewy earth under his bare feet on full moon mornings, the constant rustling of the nearby creek that he remembered hearing, even in his second floor bedroom next to Laura “headbanger” Hale.

 

Rumors had spread of the town trying to repurpose the ground. Derek saw an image in his mind of park benches and children, a shady public place where hikers on the path that cut in front of the lot would rest, and if he were a better person it would have made him happy to think that someone out there in the future would fill it with laughter and peace and the simple sounds of human life. He closed his eyes and couldn’t do it, unable to let go at of what should be his home. And it just figured, he thought at the time, holding on too tightly was a Hale trait.

 

Fighting for the rights to the land was easy, surprisingly so. The elders on the town council were sympathetic to the scions of the family that had once contributed so much to their tiny town and helped him go through the right channels to buy back the land. An old coworker of his mom guided him through the mess that was construction permits and blueprints. Until, weeks later, he stood with the pack, Cora’s hand held tightly in his, and watched as the crew broke ground for the new foundation.

 

Derek lingered for days on the outskirts, watching and obsessing over the process. Unable to shake the fascination he had for the transformation taking place in front of his eyes. The men would glance at him and shy away, unnerved and wary, so he tried not to lurk but it itched to know that people were there, that this was out of his control, and inside he howled and howled for the dirt damp leaf green wood smell of what he knew, now more than ever, was his territory. The crew leader, Mack, pulled him aside and this part was unclear, hazy, but he found himself in a hard hat and boots tearing at the ground with shovels and pouring cement.

 

There was wood in his hands and plaster on his skin and there was this intensely visceral moment where he just understood. Derek Hale was _building_ something.

 

Laura had a friend who was a therapist; she asked him once if he had ever considered taking the old house down with his hands. Literally tearing down the thing that figuratively shadowed the corners of his mind. She said it would be cathartic for him, something about facing his past. He knew now, watching the frame go up and the house take shape, that it would have never been the catharsis he needed. The last thing Derek Hale wanted was more destruction.

 

Cora came out to see him sometimes. They had conversations about turning points and families and stuttered over rough pasts. They sat on the half finished floors in the dead of night and he told her “It’s for you.” She shook her head and combed the dust out of his hair and smiled the most heartbreakingly broken smile he had ever seen. It was her first real one; Derek thought it beautiful. Cora said, “It’s for us.” And he grinned at the white thumbnail curving down in the blue-black sky because it was.

 

It really was. 

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory [tumblr](http://www.loversforlycanthropes.tumblr.com) plug.


End file.
